Definitions, Scope, and Concepts

Subsidies, tax structures, and accounting methods that permit the continued “externalization”

of severe environmental costs—and that therefore make unsustainable practices appear to be

sustainable and profitable—remain fundamental barriers to more rapid change.

Meanwhile, the world faces equally challenging employment problems. Outright unemployment

stands at roughly 6 percent, affecting some 190 million people.2 But even among the world’s

3 billion jobholders aged 15 or older, many confront vulnerable employment situations. And

about 487 million workers do not earn enough to rise above the $1-a-day line of extreme poverty;

some 1.3 billion earn less than $2 a day. Particularly in developing countries, many people work

informally, in situations typically marked by very low pay, dangerous work conditions, and a lack of

health insurance.3 (See Table I.1-1.)



Table I.1-1. Working Poor and Workers in Vulnerable Employment Situations, 2007

US$1 a Day

Working Poor

World

Total (million)

Share (percent)



US$2 a Day

Working Poor



Vulnerable

Employment



487

16.4



1,295

43.5



—

49.9



As Share of Total Employment

Developed Economies & EU



—



—



9.2



Central/Southeastern Europe & CIS



1.9



21.0



19.3



East Asia



8.7



35.6



55.7



South East Asia & Pacific



13.4



50.3



59.4



South Asia



33.0



80.3



77.2



Latin America & Caribbean



8.0



25.4



33.2



Middle East



4.2



19.3



32.2



North Africa



1.6



42.0



30.7



Sub-Saharan Africa



53.0



85.4



72.9



Source: See Endnote 3 for this section.



Tens of millions of young people newly enter the world’s labor market each year, but not all of

them secure gainful employment. For 2008, even as 40 million new jobs are being created, the

International Labour Organization (ILO) expects world unemployment to grow by 5 million.4

Particularly in countries with large populations of young people, the need for jobs in coming years

and decades will be intense; already, youth unemployment represents a major challenge for all

societies. And existing workers hope to hold on to their jobs in the face of growing outsourcing, a

steady pace of automation, and other worries about job and income safety.

The urgent need to move toward a more sustainable economy further complicates these issues. It

at once poses a profound challenge for governments, companies, communities, and individuals,



34



Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world



but also offers vast business and employment opportunities. Indeed, the pursuit of green jobs

will be a key economic driver in the 21st century, as the world sets out into the largely uncharted

territory of achieving a low-carbon global economy. Greening the economy will involve largescale investment in new technologies, equipment, buildings, and infrastructure, and could thus

be a major stimulus for much-needed employment.

In part, this requires a greening of education, skill building, and on-the-job training. But making

the economy more sustainable will also require a just transition for those who now hold jobs

in carbon-intensive and polluting industries. For labor unions, already buffeted by the forces of

globalization that bear an uncertain future in terms of wages, job security, and organizing rights,

this transition is a major challenge. Traditionally, workers in dirty industries have succeeded

in securing higher degrees of organizing and better wages than those in other sectors of the

economy, and so it is not surprising that unions would want to defend jobs in those industries. But

greening the economy is also a key union issue from a positive vantage point because workplaces

are at the forefront of the existential struggle to counter climate change and other environmental

ills and because green jobs can, in principle, be a driver for a more secure future for workers.



Defining and Counting Green Jobs

Will future jobs increasingly be “green”? And if so, what renders them so?

Given the broad scope of the needed technological change and economic transformation and

restructuring, there are many aspects and dimensions to greening the economy. According to the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “environmental protection

consists of activities to measure, prevent, limit, minimize, or correct environmental damage to

water, air, and soil, as well as problems related to waste, noise, and ecosystems. This includes

activities, cleaner technologies, products, and services that reduce environmental risk and

minimize pollution and resource use.”5

There are many technologies, work processes, and products and services that reduce humanity’s

environmental footprint, making the economy become more sustainable. Given the urgent nature

of the environmental crisis, however, these improvements must be very substantial. Marginal

changes are inadequate to the task ahead—and may simply be overwhelmed by a combination

of growing per-capita consumption and rising human numbers.

In an ideal state of affairs, a green economy is one that does not generate pollution or waste and

is hyper-efficient in its use of energy, water, and materials. Using this green utopia as a yardstick

would mean that currently there are few, if any, green jobs. A more realistic, pragmatic approach

is process-oriented rather than fixated on an ideal yet elusive end-state. In other words, green

jobs are those that contribute appreciably to maintaining or restoring environmental quality and

avoiding future damage to the Earth’s ecosystems.

We define green jobs as positions in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, installation, and



Part I - Definitions And Policies: Definitions, Scope, and Concepts



35



maintenance, as well as scientific and technical, administrative, and service-related activities, that

contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not

exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce

energy, materials, and water consumption through high-efficiency and avoidance strategies; decarbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and

pollution. But green jobs, as we argue below, also need to be good jobs that meet longstanding

demands and goals of the labor movement, i.e., adequate wages, safe working conditions, and

worker rights, including the right to organize labor unions.

Conventional industries tend to be well captured in government and other statistics. By contrast,

of the totality of what can be characterized as green economic activities, employment data are

available only for certain segments (industries or countries). Even where such data are available,

they tend to be snapshots rather than time series, and to be estimates and projections more than

firm figures. New industries—such as the renewable energy sector or energy auditing—can be

identified relatively easily. But other changes that help green the economy are much harder to

define and capture: for instance, new technologies, business practices, and shifts in professions and

occupations that yield improved energy, materials, and water efficiency; methods and techniques

that help avoid or minimize the generation of waste; or new structures and infrastructures that

generally make an economy less reliant on material inputs. Many of these changes will occur in

existing companies and industries, but are difficult to separate out.

Greater efficiency is a core requirement of an economy that is less environmentally damaging—

achieving the same economic output (and level of wellbeing) with far less material input. But efficiency

is a relative and highly dynamic concept. There is no easily agreed threshold or cutoff point that

separates efficient and inefficient. How much more efficient is sufficient? And, given technological

progress and the ever-present need to minimize environmental impacts associated with energy and

materials consumption, can yesterday’s level of efficiency still be regarded as adequate tomorrow? Thus,

while the basic definition of a green job may stay the same, its essence keeps changing over time.

For newly emerging “green” sectors of the economy, such as renewables, employment estimates may

alternatively be derived from industry surveys, from analyses that generate employment coefficient

estimates (such as jobs per unit of production or production capacity installed, or jobs per unit of

investment spending), or from macroeconomic models (such as input-output models that seek to

capture direct and indirect employment and estimate net employment impacts). The modeling

exercises are usually based on a key underlying assumption, such as meeting a specific policy goal

(for instance, generating a portion of energy supplies from clean sources by a given target year),

spending a given amount of money, or implementing a policy tool (such as a carbon tax). These

different approaches result in findings that cannot simply be aggregated or extrapolated.



36



Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world



© Wolfgang Steche / VISUM / Still Pictures

Solar panels being installed at a former mining site in Germany. Goettelborn, Germany.



Other studies, based on macro-economic calculations, do not focus on green industries but

seek to determine the likely overall effect on the economy arising from policies aiming to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental impacts. They focus on the ways in which

production costs may change, how demand for products and technologies may be altered by

new regulations and standards, etc.

The results of such analyses are heavily influenced by the basic assumptions that go into them.

For instance, how will the costs of energy and material inputs evolve? A basic assumption among

environmentalists and ecological economists is that prices for energy and materials will have to

rise in order to stimulate greater conservation and efficiency measures. But how fast will prices

rise, and will this change occur as part of a deliberate, far-sighted policy or as a consequence of

unforeseen and unwanted shocks? How well do companies adapt, and to what extent do they

attempt to green their operations in a proactive fashion or resist such change?

The nature of these and other assumptions inevitably colors the general nature of the findings.

Thus, skeptical assumptions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental

measures will likely produce studies that predict job losses, just as more positive assumptions will

yield upbeat results. Most studies agree, however, that the likely impact is a small positive change

in total employment.6



Part I - Definitions And Policies: Definitions, Scope, and Concepts



37



Green Jobs ‘Radiating Out’

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), just

three sectors of the world economy—electricity generation, fuel supply, and transportation—

together directly account for close to 40 percent of all carbon emissions. (This does not obviate

the need for greening other sectors of the economy in their own right, of course, but energy and

transportation clearly have strategic character.) The jobs in these sectors do not amount to a very

large number relative to the overall size of the world labor market. However, a point that is not

always recognized is that greening jobs in core areas of the economy has the potential to “radiate”

across large sections of the economy and to contribute to the greening of other jobs that make

up large sections of the total workforce.

For instance, even with strong growth in renewables, the energy industry itself will always remain a

relatively small employer (as is the case now, with fossil fuels dominant). But clean energy radiates

out far beyond the confines of the energy sector itself. It means that any business activity will

have far less environmental impact than today, when fuels and electricity are still largely produced

from dirty sources. Likewise, greening vehicles (that is, producing cars, trucks, and buses that run

on cleaner fuels and are more efficient) means that the many millions of jobs in transportation

services are by implication also greener. The number of jobs in transportation services surpasses

vehicle-manufacturing jobs several-fold.

The present study is focused on the transformation toward a low-carbon economy and hence

does not include an analysis of sectors that, for different reasons, have tremendous impacts on

sustainability. Reducing the environmental and health impacts of the chemical sector, for instance,

is also critical. Like energy, synthetic chemicals are ubiquitous in all walks of life, and developing

safe alternatives to toxic substances almost automatically makes many other jobs outside this

industry proper—from agriculture to medicine—more sustainable.



Green and Decent Jobs

In addition to quantities of jobs, there is a range of qualitative questions, relating to occupational

profiles and work skills, wage levels, and the degree to which worker representation (unionization) and

workplace involvement (empowerment) are advanced or not. To fully identify, adopt, and implement

green opportunities in the workplace, the active involvement of workers and unions is essential.

Green jobs span a wide array of skills, educational backgrounds, and occupational profiles.7 (See

Box I.I-1.) They occur in research and development; professional fields such as engineering and

architecture; project planning and management; auditing; administration, marketing, retail,

and customer services; and in many traditional blue-collar areas such as plumbing or electrical

wiring. Also, green jobs exist not just in private business, but also in government offices (standard

setting, rule-making, permitting, monitoring and enforcement, support programs, etc.), science

and academia, professional associations, and civil society organizations (advocacy and watchdog

groups, community organizations, etc.).



38



Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low Carbon World



Box I.1-1. Occupational Profiles in the Wind Power Industry

Wind power development opens up employment opportunities in a variety of fields. It requires

meteorologists and surveyors to rate appropriate sites with the greatest wind potential; people trained in

anemometry (measuring the force, speed, and direction of the wind); structural, electrical, and mechanical

engineers to design turbines, generators, and other equipment and to supervise their assembly; workers

to form advanced composite and metal parts; quality-control personnel to monitor machining, casting,

and forging processes; computer operators and software specialists to monitor the system; and mechanics

and technicians to keep it in good working order. Many of these are highly skilled positions with good

pay. An analysis of an Ohio-based wind turbine manufacturing company found that the average annual

earnings per employee were about $46,000, with a range of about $30,000 for the lowest-paid to $120,000

for the highest-paid. This average figure is slightly above the U.S. national average wage level of about

$43,000 for 2006.

Source: See Endnote 7 for this section.



Environmental awareness and applied green literacy will become increasingly important in many

professions. But not all green jobs will be new ones, and in fact, it is likely that in most workplaces

low-key changes in day-to-day work practices and methods will predominate. Blue-collar workers

may fairly quietly be transformed into green-collar workers. Indeed, a November 2007 report

published by the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) finds that, “the vast majority of the jobs

created by RE&EE [renewable energy and energy efficiency] are standard jobs for accountants,

engineers, computer analysts, clerks, factory workers, truck drivers, mechanics, etc. In fact, most of

the workers employed in these jobs may not even realize that they owe their livelihood to RE&EE.”

The ASES study emphasizes that renewables and efficiency-related parts of the economy employ

workers at all educational and skill levels.8

A narrow definition of green jobs may focus solely on the green credentials of a job. However,

worker advocates and the ILO rightly emphasize that green jobs also need to be decent jobs—

pairing concerns like efficiency and low emissions with traditional labor concerns including

wages, career prospects, job security, occupational health and safety as well as other working

conditions, and worker rights. Of course, the precise nature and quality of jobs across the planet

varies enormously. While desirable, there will be no single global standard for the foreseeable

future. But even accepting the inevitability of differentials in pay and other characteristics, certain

standards need to be upheld. People’s livelihoods, rights, and sense of dignity are bound up tightly

with their jobs; jobs need to provide equal hope for the environment and the jobholder. A job

that is exploitative, harmful, or fails to pay a living wage (or worse, condemns workers to a life of

poverty) can hardly be called green. (See Figure I.1-1.)



Part I - Definitions And Policies: Definitions, Scope, and Concepts







Figure I.1-1. Green and Decent Jobs? A Schematic Overview

Green, but not decent

Examples:



Green and decent

Examples:



q Electronics recycling without



q Unionized wind and solar



adequate occupational

safety



Environment



q Low-wage installers of solar

panels



power jobs



q Green architects

q Well-paid public transit

employees



q Exploited biofuels plantation

days laborers

Neither green nor decent

Examples:



Decent, but not green

Examples:



q coal mining with adequate



q Unionized car



safety



q Women workers in the cut

flower industry in Africa and

in Latin America



manufacturing workers



q Chemical engineers

q Airline pilots



q Hog slaughterhouse workers



Decent Work

Ideally, the future of employment will increasingly be marked by jobs that are respectful and

protective not only of the natural environment, but also of workers’ health, human needs, and

rights. As this report will show, however, there are today millions of jobs in sectors that are

nominally in support of environmental goals—such as the electronics recycling industry in Asia,

for instance—but whose day-to-day reality is characterized by extremely poor practices, exposing

workers to hazardous substances that endanger their health and lives. In agriculture as well, there

are enormous deficits with regard to decent work—including such fundamental problems as

lack of freedom of association, forced labor, child labor, and other shortcomings. A green jobs

strategy needs to be fully attentive to these problems and to seek to overcome them. Decent work

conditions need to be as important to advocates for the environment as environmental concerns

to advocates for labor.



Shades of Green

Environment-related technologies and activities are often lumped together under terms such as

“environmental industry” or “clean tech.” While these are convenient catchall references, they are

also somewhat problematic.

“Clean tech” spans a broad spectrum of products and services, including, among others, alternative

energy (generation, batteries and storage, infrastructure); more resource-efficient industrial

processes; advanced materials and nanotechnology; remanufacturing; chemicals recovery and

biological and chemical processes for water and waste purification; and testing, monitoring, and



40



Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world



compliance services. The common thread is the use of new, innovative technology to create

products and services with less detrimental impact on the environment.9

However, the term clean tech does not necessarily make a basic, yet crucial, distinction: whether

the generation of pollutants and wastes is to be managed or to be minimized and avoided, and

thus what types of green jobs will result. The first category encompasses industrial and serviceoriented branches of the economy that specialize in air and water pollution-control equipment,

waste management, and remediation efforts. As the world moves to confront climate change,

adaptation measures such as carbon sequestration, flood protection, and climate-resistant crops

could be included under this category as well.

Like clean tech, “environmental industry” is unfortunately also often used as a broad aggregation

that may group together pollution control and waste management strategies with approaches

that avoid the generation of pollutants and waste in the first place. A study by Environmental

Business International put the environmental goods and services sector worldwide at $548 billion

in 2004, though most of that turnover was related to pollution control measures. The sector was

expected to grow to close to $800 billion by 2015.10

Pollution control responses were central to the initial response to signs of environmental

degradation from the 1960s and 70s on. Environmental regulations led to the creation of a sizable

industry that, by the turn of the 21st century, employed a conservatively estimated 11 million

people worldwide, many of them in traditional manufacturing and construction jobs.11

But the pollution control approach remains wedded to the resource- and waste-intensive

economy, addressing environmental consequences as an afterthought. The depth of the

environmental crisis compels a more fundamental, ecologically inspired, transformation of the

economy—in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, services, and infrastructure. This restructuring

will need to bring about a reduction in resource consumption and associated emissions (air

and water pollutants, carbon emissions) and the minimization or avoidance of waste streams.

Therefore, the promotion of alternative sources of energy; advancement of energy, water, and

materials efficiency; greening of new building construction and retrofitting and weatherizing of

existing structures; diversification of transportation modes; and development of non-polluting

methods are key measures. We are seeing the beginnings of this transformation today.

There are different degrees to which technologies, products, businesses, and business practices

can be said to be green, ranging from reactive and remedial measures on the one hand to proactive

measures on the other. Table I.1-2 gives an indication of this graduation from more limited to more

transformative approaches for major parts of the human economy and society.



Part I - Definitions And Policies: Definitions, Scope, and Concepts



41



Table I.1-2. Shades of Green: Pro-Environmental Measures in Major Segments of the

Economy

Energy Supply

Integrated gasification/ carbon sequestration

Co-generation (combined heat and power)

Renewables (wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, small-scale hydro); fuel cells



Transport

More fuel-efficient vehicles

Hybrid-electric, electric, and fuel-cell vehicles

Car sharing

Public transit

Non-motorized transport (biking, walking), and changes in land-use policies and settlement

patterns (reducing distance and dependence on motorized transport)



Manufacturing

Pollution control (scrubbers and other tailpipe technologies)

Energy and materials efficiency

Clean production techniques (toxics avoidance)

Cradle-to-cradle (closed-loop systems)



Buildings

Lighting, energy-efficient appliances and office equipment

Solar heating/cooling, solar panels

Retrofitting

Green buildings (energy-efficient windows, insulation, building materials, HVAC)

Passive-solar houses, zero-emissions buildings



Materials Management

Recycling

Extended producer responsibility/ product take-back and remanufacturing

De-materialization

Durability and repairability of products



Retail

Promotion of efficient products/ eco-labels

Store locations closer to residential areas

Minimization of shipping distances (from origin of products to store location)

New service economy (selling services, not products)



Agriculture

Soil conservation

Water efficiency

Organic growing methods

Reducing farm-to-market distance



Forestry

Reforestation and afforestation projects

Agroforestry

Sustainable forestry management and certification schemes

Halting deforestation



42



Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world



Developing renewable energy and raw materials, as well as efficient and waste-avoiding

technologies, production processes, products, and services is crucially important to greening the

economy. For example, producing aluminum from recycled scrap is environmentally preferable to

virgin production because it is far less energy-intensive. But equally important are the structures and

spatial arrangements that characterize an economy. To the extent that great distances—between

industries and their suppliers, between stores and homes, between homes and workplaces—are

a feature of an economy, there is a built-in need for large-scale motorized transportation services.

That need can be met by more fuel-efficient vehicles, but it is a less optimal solution than one that

allows for public transit or one that minimizes the need for such transportation.

Especially in OECD countries, there is a rapidly growing literature on the subject of environment

and employment. However, the proliferation of studies and reports does not necessarily permit

a straightforward aggregation of results. One key reason is the lack of a commonly accepted,

consistent definition of “green”—the boundaries of renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean

technology, sustainable transport, organic agriculture, and so on.

The scope of available studies varies considerably. Individual analyses are based on widely diverging

assumptions and scenarios, methodologies, variables, base years, and future time horizons for

estimates and forecasts. While available studies allow certain conclusions to be drawn, their

findings cannot be aggregated or extrapolated. The result is more of an impressionistic picture

than a precise set of job figures.



Employment Shifts

From a broad conceptual perspective, employment will be affected in at least four ways as the

economy is oriented toward greater sustainability:

q First, in some cases, additional jobs will be created—as in the manufacturing of pollution control

devices added to existing production equipment.

q Second, some employment will be substituted—as in shifting from fossil fuels to renewables, or

from truck manufacturing to rail-car manufacturing, or from landfilling and waste incineration to

recycling.

q Third, certain jobs may be eliminated without direct replacement—as when packaging materials

are discouraged or banned and their production is discontinued.

q Fourth, it would appear that many existing jobs (especially such as plumbers, electricians, metal

workers, and construction workers) will simply be redefined as day-to-day skillsets, work methods,

and profiles are greened. It goes without saying that this last aspect is by far the hardest to document

and analyze, and the hardest for which to foresee the full implications.



Highly aggregated findings of employment impacts of green policies and business ventures are of

somewhat limited utility: the job effects will necessarily vary for different firms, industries, regions,

and countries. Table I.1-3 offers a number of distinctions and observations.12



Part I - Definitions And Policies: Definitions, Scope, and Concepts



43



Table I.1-3. Greening the Economy: Types of Employment Effects

Type of Effect



Observation

•



Positive and negative

employment effects



•



•

New job creation and job

preservation



•



•

Direct and indirect

employment effects



•

•

•



Temporary and long-term

jobs

Part-time and full-time

employment



•

•



Green policies and business practices can create new jobs or preserve existing

ones.

On the other hand, environmental regulations can, in theory, have negative

job consequences (by raising costs, reducing demand, or rendering a factory or

company uncompetitive). This, however, has proven to be an exceedingly rare

outcome.

To some extent, green jobs will be created through the development of new

technologies and the emergence of new industries (wind turbines, solar

photovoltaics, fuel cells, biofuels, etc.).

As established firms and industries green their operations, existing jobs may

be transformed, and thus preserved against possible loss (implying changes in

work methods, retraining).

Jobs are created directly through increased demand and output induced by

environment-related expenditures.

Indirect employment effects arise in supplier industries.

Induced job effects occur as wage incomes are spent generating demand in

additional industries.

Construction and installation jobs (for instance, of a wind turbine) are usually of

a temporary nature (as are jobs that are supported by a specific policy measure

or program).

Manufacturing and maintenance jobs, on the other hand, are in principle of a

longer-lasting nature.

Part-time jobs may be expressed in terms of full-time equivalents (reflecting

the aggregate amount of employment generated).



Source: See Endnote 12 for this section.



There is also the question of to what extent specific communities, regions, or countries benefit

from green employment. In part, this is linked to the questions of to what extent energy and

materials need to be imported, what share of revenues is captured by local producers as opposed

to middlemen and globally-operating companies, and whether the necessary industrial and

knowledge base, as well as infrastructure, exist in a particular country, region, or other locality.

Countries that become leaders in green products, services, and technology development will want

to press their advantage and capture export markets in addition to serving their own domestic

markets. Indeed, countries like Germany and Japan see the environment as a key dimension of

their future economic strategy. This implies that the bulk of green business revenues and jobs in

R&D and manufacturing operations accrues to a relatively small group of countries, at least until

other countries catch up. By contrast, jobs in operations and maintenance tend to be created in or

near the location where wind turbines, solar panels, efficient windows, etc. are installed and used;

they cannot be easily outsourced.



44



Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world